Francesca's Thoughts

Do all you non-real-life readers remember Donnie? I don’t think I introduced him properly. My family found him – or rather, he found my family – in Greece in April last year, and we brought him home at the end of last January. He’s this little thing with huge webbed feet and a wonky face who breathes like Tim Minchin’s baby and hoards cuddles like that dwarf king did gold. He and Fred, our other dog, are amongst my top five things on the planet.

A few weeks ago Donnie’s eyes started going funny, rolling up in his head. My parents took him to the vet, who referred him to another vet, who diagnosed him with a disease called leishmaniasis. It’s a from a Leishmania parasite passed from sandflies to other creatures (humans can get it too but it isn’t a cross-species thing). Its symptoms can be controlled with drugs but it cannot be cured and it causes, amongst other things, kidney failure. Donnie went into a critical care hospital at the weekend after he stopped eating, came home on Tuesday and went back today, when he stopped eating again. He’s been put on a feeding tube and should be home tomorrow, but we’ve been told that he only has a few months left. I don’t quite know how to explain how incredibly unfair this is, or how distraught my family is – but I’m letting you lot know so if I don’t post for three weeks during the next six months, you need not worry; I’m sitting at home with Fred trying not to have a meltdown. I’ll probably also be doing a lot of pet-centric posts in the spring which I’ve thought about over the past year but never made because I assumed I’d have years to sort them out.

To prevent this site becoming too life-y, if the world doesn’t end tomorrow I’ll post the Indifferent Ignorance awards (and if anyone who found this randomly wants to post a spelling issue or something equally asinine, save yourself the trouble: my response will be to block you from posting again, or to tell you to go fuck yourself, or both).

F.